Re: Data protection.
"Except when, for some reason, a huge American commercial enterprise [ie. Ancestry. com] seems to have somehow managed to be appointed gatekeepers of this info and are allowed to charge us for access to it —profiting from selling us back the data which our ancestors were legally obliged to provide."
Anyone can go to Kew and look at it. It appears, although I'm not sure, that Ancestry.com digitized the lot, and so they have access to it. It's not clear to me whether they paid for the privilege of doing this, I suspect so. If another company wants to do this, I would guess that the ONS not only would be happy to allow it, but would legally be required to do so.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
